Good Riddance To Bad Rubbish
It took far too long, but the arch-nemesis of traditional American diplomacy has finally come to a well-deserved terminus:
End of the neo-con dream
By Paul Reynolds, BBC World Affairs correspondent
21 December 2006
The neo-conservative dream faded in 2006.
The neo-conservatives were called that because they sought to re-establish what they felt were true conservative values in the Republican Party and the United States. They wanted to stop what they felt were the isolationist tendencies that had developed under President Clinton, and even under the pragmatic President George Bush senior.
The idea of the “The Project for the New American Century” was to project American power and influence around the world. They predicted the development of democratic values in a region lacking in them and, in that way, the removal of any threat to the United States just as the democratisation of Germany and Japan after World War II had transformed Europe and the Pacific. They saw the war in Iraq as their big chance of showing how the “New American Century” might work.
The 1997 statement (written during the administration of President Bill Clinton) said: “We seem to have forgotten the essential elements of the Reagan Administration’s success: a military that is strong and ready to meet both present and future challenges; a foreign policy that boldly and purposefully promotes American principles abroad; and national leadership that accepts the United States’ global responsibilities.”
The ambitions proclaimed when the neo-cons’ mission statement “The Project for the New American Century” was declared in 1997 have turned into disappointment and recriminations as the crisis in Iraq has grown. Since so much was pinned on Iraq, it is inevitable that the problems there should have undermined the whole idea. “Project” has been reduced to a voice-mail box and a ghostly website. A single employee has been left to wrap things up.
Let’s hope that the paycheck doesn’t start bouncing anytime soon, as the ultra-wrong-wingers will pull out their financial support to apply to the next incarnation of the imposition of corporo-fascism in America. We wouldn’t want a neocon to have to accept welfare!